


Mine

by whelvenwings



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M, Sirens
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-08
Updated: 2015-01-08
Packaged: 2018-03-06 15:43:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3139778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whelvenwings/pseuds/whelvenwings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean and Cas are on a hunt together, searching for what Dean thinks is probably a ghost. However, strange things start happening, and suddenly all Dean's most secret desires seem to be coming true... but is this really who he's been wanting?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mine

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Español available: [Mío](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3295268) by [impalaforthree (anita4869)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/anita4869/pseuds/impalaforthree)



“OK, we’ll just leave our stuff here, and then see if we can find a way to put this ghost on ice,” Dean said, pushing the car door closed behind him and hearing Cas do the same on the passenger side. They began to move together across the parking lot towards the motel entrance, Dean swinging his bag over his shoulder like a shotgun, Cas holding the handles of his tight in one hand. The outside air tasted slightly smoggy and thick, tepid with the lazy-fingered reach of the late summer sun. There was the faint sound of music coming from one of the motel rooms, and Dean found himself walking in time with the heavy bass, quickening his step ever so slightly and pulling a little ahead of Cas. As he did so, he felt the hairs on the back of his neck tingling, and glanced back – but Cas was looking up at the cloud-smeared sky, not at him. Dean frowned, throwing a quick glance around the parking lot.

“Dean?” Cas said, following Dean’s gaze with a little frown. “Is everything alright?”

“Yeah,” Dean said distractedly, his gaze still sharpened with suspicion as he stared along the rows of parked cars. “Yeah, I just thought I felt something watching me.”

Cas was silent for a few moments, watching Dean’s face as he continued to look.

“It’s nothing,” Dean said, finally, when he’d eyed up every inch of the surroundings and seen nothing more threatening than a loose plastic bag, crawling over the cement like some bizarre animal in the ever-so-slight breeze. He frowned over at it, and continued, “I’m just antsy. Five hours in the car will do that to you. C’mon, let’s get a room.”

“You go on ahead,” Cas said, stepping away from Dean in the other direction. Dean frowned, and waited, watching where Cas was going.

Cas took a few quick steps over the rough cement of the parking lot, and picked up the plastic bag. He scrunched it up in the hand not already gripping his overnight bag, and walked over to the trash can at the far side of the lot, over by the fence. Throwing the plastic bag in, he wiped his hand quickly on his coat and then headed back to Dean, who had been watching with a little smile growing on his face.

“Animals can choke on them, or get trapped,” Cas explained. Dean nodded.

“You used to save demons from Perdition, Cas,” he said, as he pushed open the door to the motel. “How’s it feel to be saving a cat from a coughing fit?”

“Infinitely preferable,” Cas retorted at once. “The cat would be much more pleasant company afterwards.”

Dean grinned and met Cas’ eye for a moment, enjoying their warm banter. The car ride over had been a little awkward and quiet at first, but slowly the silence had melted into this gentle ribbing, which Dean was comfortable with. He and Sam did it all the time – though it felt pretty different to when he did it with Sam, Dean admitted. He couldn’t put his finger on why, exactly, but there was a strange, clenching feeling in his stomach whenever he said something a little rude to Cas. It was a strange kind of nervousness that almost felt good. It was confusing.

“Can I help you?” Dean heard someone say, and zoned back in to find himself standing in front of the motel receptionist, who was looking at him with slightly raised eyebrows, waiting for him to speak.

“Right – uh, yeah,” Dean said, and booked them a twin room. He was surprisingly tired after the drive over, and the empty feeling in his tummy was becoming distracting. As they walked down the corridor to their room, Dean distinctly heard Cas’ stomach grumbling, too.

“Food,” he said, as he unlocked the door and walked into the room. “We need some. You wait here, I’ll go to a grocery store and pick up a few things, OK? You know where my laptop is, do some more research on this ghost.”

“Does this place have Internet services?” Cas said, carefully placing his bag down at the foot of one of the beds. Dean shrugged.

“Sam usually just… finds it,” he said, chucking his bag down on the other bed and heading for the door. “I’ll be back soon, OK?”

The walk to the grocery store wasn’t far; Dean kept a sharp eye out as he went, not forgetting the sensation of being watched that he’d felt before. He didn’t see anything out of the ordinary, however; the little town that they were in was small, sleepy and unexciting. His cell phone beeped just as he was going into the store, and he pulled it out of his pocket to see that he had a text from Sam. He opened it, picking up a basket with his other hand.

 _Bored,_ it read.  _Did you guys get there yet?_

Dean smirked and shook his head as he began moving down the aisles, throwing things into the basket.

 _Ur own fault for spraining ur ankle,_ he texted back.  _Yeah, we got here. Just picking up some groceries._

Tucking his phone away, Dean scanned the shelves in front of him for a moment. Cherry or pecan pie?

“Both,” said a deep, familiar voice, and Dean span round to see Cas standing next to him, watching his silent dilemma with a little knowing smile on his face. Dean offered him a little grin in return, but then frowned.

“I thought I told you to stay in the motel and do research?” he said, nevertheless reaching out and putting one of each kind of pie in the basket.

“I thought you might want some help bringing the groceries home,” Cas said.

“They do get pretty heavy,” Dean said sarcastically, but still felt a little bubble of pleasure in his stomach. However much he tried to deny it, there was definitely a part of him that liked being taken care of.

Cas laughed, a sound that Dean didn’t hear very often at all. He looked over at Cas, a little crease between his eyebrows.

“You should really go back to the motel,” he said. Cas’ eyes were fixed on his, warm and intense, and somehow flatter than usual. Dean couldn’t read the expression behind them like he usually could. His frown deepened. “You feeling OK, man?”

“Yes, Dean,” Cas said. “I’d rather stay with you. I enjoy your company.”

Dean stared at him for a brief moment, open-mouthed, before he felt a blush starting to rise up his cheeks. He turned away quickly, but not before he heard Cas give another disconcerting little laugh.

“Go back to the room,” Dean said, over his shoulder. “I’ll meet you there.”

He carried on walking down the aisle, not looking back to see whether Cas would do as he said. He had that strange, nervous feeling in his stomach again, incomprehensible as ever, as though his body knew something that he did not.

He quickly finished his shopping and paid for the groceries, heading back to the motel with a heavy bag in each hand. It would have been nice to have someone holding half the weight, Dean thought a little ruefully, as the plastic handles dug into his skin. Maybe he shouldn’t have sent Cas home like that. It was unusual for him to take the order, though. Normally, if Cas thought that he should stay, Cas stayed.

It was probably nothing, Dean decided, as he entered the motel and headed towards their room. Everyone gets in a weird mood sometimes. That’s all it was.

He pushed open the door. Inside the motel room, Cas was sitting at the table by the window, his lips pressed together in concentration, squinting at the screen of Dean’s laptop.

“I decided to put the cherry back,” Dean said, as he walked through the door. “I just got pecan.”

Cas looked up at him, his clouded expression clearing a little.

“Hello, Dean,” he said. He looked relaxed, Dean thought, much more so than he had at the grocery store. “That sounds like a good choice.”

Dean grunted and flopped down onto his bed, pulling out the pie and a plastic fork. He reached over and grabbed the TV remote from the bedside cabinet.

“Come watch some crappy TV,” he said, with more confidence than he would usually have been able to muster. Cas’ words kept coming back to him: I’d rather stay with you. I enjoy your company.

He wondered if they were true.

The readiness with which Cas laid down the laptop, and the warm depth to his eyes when he came over and picked out a candy bar from the grocery bag at the foot of Dean’s bed, definitely made Dean think that they might be.

There was that sensation in his stomach again, odd and fluttering. He glanced over at Cas, met his eyes, and felt the feeling intensify a little. He quickly looked back down at his pie, and experienced a sudden odd desire to smash his face into it. He had no idea what his feelings were doing right now, but it needed to stop.

“So the idea of the show is that people attempt to hurt themselves?” Cas said, distracting Dean from his thoughts. Dean focused on the screen. They were running an old episode of America’s Funniest Home Videos, and a guy had just managed to knock his friend out with a wildly-swinging lacrosse stick.

“Not exactly,” Dean said. “The people aren’t trying to hurt themselves, but they do accidentally, and then they send in the video.”

“Don’t they feel ashamed?” Cas said, frowning at the screen.

“They get paid,” said Dean, and Cas nodded, but his expression was still confused when Dean glanced his way a moment later. “S’pose it doesn’t make all that much sense, but still, if you’ve done somethin’ stupid enough to make it on to this show… a little money might help fix your ego. Might help with the medical bills, anyway.” Cas nodded, finishing off his candy bar. Dean found himself momentarily distracted by the way that Cas licked his fingers, swift and efficient like a cat, removing the melted chocolate on their tips. Dean flicked out his own tongue, almost unconsciously, running it along the inside of his bottom lip.

Cas turned to look at him, and caught him staring.

“Uh – right, so – we should get going,” Dean said, swinging his legs off the bed and smiling flatly, not meeting Cas’ eyes, trying to regain composure. Cas looked up at him for a moment, with the expression that Dean knew so well – deep-eyed and private. It could carve a silent space for two in a crowd; within the quiet confines of their motel room, it seemed positively intimate. Dean cleared his throat, and took a step back.

“Who ya gonna call?” he said, as they left the room together. Cas nodded.

“I ain’t afraid of no ghosts,” he said thoughtfully. Dean grinned, tipping his chin down towards his chest so that Cas wouldn’t see.

**

The ghost that they were chasing had abducted several people in the past few months. Most of them had gone missing from bars on the same street as the motel where Dean and Cas were staying, so they decided to split up and speak to some of the bartenders, to see if the victims had been acting oddly before they disappeared.

“It’s unusual for a ghost to take victims from different places, isn’t it?” Cas had asked, right before they went separate ways. Dean had nodded.

“Could be it’s haunting a building on this street,” he said. “Takes ‘em off the sidewalk as they walk home. Or it might not be a ghost at all.”

He’d sent Cas in to talk to the owner of the Palm Bar, a slightly tawdry-looking place with some optimistically Caribbean-themed décor in the windows only serving to highlight the grey skies reflected in them. He himself moved on to the Old Town House a hundred feet further down the street, which looked more promising for a night out – shabby, of course, but comfortably so. The bartender was a good-looking guy in his mid-thirties; Dean gave him an easy, confident smile as he approached, and the guy responded with a smirk.

“How can I be of service?” the guy said. His voice was smooth and obviously intended to be a little seductive; it was a bit high, though, Dean found himself thinking. It’d be better if he had a lower, more kind of… rough… tone.

He shook himself. Where had that come from? He hadn’t realised he had preferences surrounding the pitch of a guy’s voice. Next thing he’d be insisting that they all had brown hair, or blue eyes, or…

Dean realised that this particular train of thought was becoming very dangerous, and stopped it. Besides, he’d been standing silently in front of the hot bartender for a good three seconds, and it was probably beginning to freak the poor guy out.

“Hey there,” Dean said, trying to regain his previous air of unflustered cockiness. The guy relaxed again, smiling a little, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “I’m here about some people that have gone missing in this town.” He flipped open his fake FBI badge casually, and watched the bartender’s eyes widen.

“Sure, Officer, anything I can do to help,” he said.

“Some of the people who went missing were at your bar on the night they disappeared,” Dean said. He pulled some pictures out of his jacket pocket, and spread them on the bar. “These ones. You remember seeing any of ‘em?”

“Yeah,” the guy said, scratching his stubbly chin with one finger as he perused the photos. “I remember a few of them. Not much about them, just… they were here. They all seemed to be having a good time.”

“No sign of anything unusual? No odd behaviour?” Dean pressed, but the bartender shook his head.

“Not really,” he replied. “Well, wait. I remember this one, he said that he was having the best night of his life, because he just met up with an ex-girlfriend he lost touch with years ago but he still had feelings for. And this one, she bought a round for everyone in the bar on the night she went missing, ‘cause she said she was crazy happy. Said she just met the guy of her dreams. She was pretty drunk, though, so that could’ve been the beer doing the talking.”

Dean nodded, frowning.

“Were all of these people with somebody?” he said. “Did any of them come alone?”

“Uh, yeah, I think most of them did,” the guy said. “That is, they arrived solo, but they left duo, if you know what I mean.”

Dean raised his eyebrows, a knowing smile on his face. The guy shrugged.

“It’s normal round here,” he said. “Everyone knows. You want a quiet drink, you go to the Red Door on the other side of town. You want to dance, you go to Palm Bar. And you want to hook up, you come here, to the Old Town House.”

“Kids these days,” Dean said, picking up the photos and tucking them away. “Well, thanks for your help, buddy. Here’s my number. Let me know if you need anything.”

“I sure will, Officer,” the guy replied, with a little flirtatious smile that Dean returned blandly. He turned to go, and almost fell backwards; Cas was standing right behind him, his eyes narrowed.

“You seemed to like him,” Cas observed, with a little hard edge to his voice. Dean adjusted his jacket, regaining his composure. He cast a glance at the bartender, who had moved away and was cleaning glasses out of earshot.

“He was helpful,” Dean said. Cas’ expression of disapproval didn’t change; Dean frowned at him for a moment, not understanding, before suddenly a thought struck him – but it was impossible, surely Cas couldn’t be… jealous?

The thought felt hot and slightly terrifying inside his brain. He tried to push it away, but it was too big, too fascinating – because if Cas was jealous, well, didn’t that mean that…

The butterflies in Dean’s stomach were working overtime. He was careful not to look into Cas’ eyes; he felt sure that their usual talent for stripping him down to the raw truth would be too much to bear right now.

“Anyway,” he said. “Did you find anything out about –”

“We should come back here tonight,” Cas said. His tone was unusual, Dean thought. More relaxed, more natural, somehow, than normal. “If you want to, that is.”

“Yeah, sure,” he said, after a moment’s hesitation.

“Or perhaps we should go to Palm Bar,” Cas said. “If the bartender here is going to present me with competition for your attention.”

Dean couldn’t help but look up into Cas’ eyes then. Things that had been quiet and unspoken and stationary for a very long time were suddenly being put into motion, and it felt a little like having the rug pulled sharply out from under his feet. Cas’ smile was bright and hard; Dean expected to watch it soften when Cas saw his face and read in it all his confusion, but his expression didn’t shift an inch. Dean had never seen him look so… outward-facing, so unresponsive to Dean’s emotion. Was this how Cas flirted? With his mouth a smirking, cocksure line and his eyes so dangerous, so… depthless?

Even as Dean had the thought, he could have sworn that Cas’ eyes darkened a touch, deepening in colour. He swallowed. He must be going mad. He realised that he’d been opening and closing his mouth silently for a few seconds, and tried to reclaim his hold on the conversation.

“Uh, uh, right,” he stuttered. “Yeah. I mean, no. No competition.”

Cas smiled, and the triumph in his eyes was a little beautiful, and entirely terrifying.

“OK. I’m gonna go use the bathroom. Meet you outside,” Dean said.

Inside the bathroom, he stared at himself in the mirror, hands braced on either side of the cracked sink. His heart was still pounding in his chest, and he couldn’t tell whether it was a good or a bad feeling.

In some ways he was still disbelieving, but he’d been part of the game for too long not to notice when someone else was making a play. Cas was showing interest in him, almost certainly, and in a slightly smug, confident way that was ticking all of Dean’s boxes. And yet, there was a tightness in his gut, an ever-so-slight tremor in his chest that spoke of hesitancy.

Was it that he wasn’t interested in Cas, Dean wondered? After all, he’d known the guy for years, been friends with him for so long. Maybe he was freaking out because he didn’t want them to move from safe friendship territory into the unknown lands of a romantic relationship. Perhaps after all this time, it would simply be too strange to think about kissing Cas, or holding him, or running his fingers along the length of his shoulders, down his back, and –

Okay, so that wasn’t the problem, then.

So what was it? Why did his stomach feel as though it was determined to tie itself into knots? Was he worried about how this would alter their relationship, that they’d lose something, some of their – Dean-and-Cas-ness? If Cas’ flirtatious behaviour was anything to go by, then they’d lose some of their warmth, some of their silent understanding. In return, this new Cas seemed like he wanted to pay attention to Dean, helping him with shopping bags and getting jealous when he looked at other men.

It seemed like a pretty poor exchange, if Dean was honest. He ‘d carry his own weight in shopping bags for a year before he gave up that light, washed-clean feeling that came with being looked at and understood by Cas. Just thinking about it gave Dean a little happy chill up his back. And then, of course, there was Cas’ soft smile, the one that had turned wide and a little fierce out there a moment ago. Cas’ smile was one of Dean’s favourite things, always had been, ever since he’d first seen the fresh curls of it unfurling quietly as they sat together on a pair of park benches.

But he was being stupid. This was all Cas, right? He wasn’t going to lose his favourite things about Cas just by getting a little more romantically involved with him. He’d get to see all of those things close up, maybe every day. Maybe Cas would come and live with him, if they were together. Maybe he’d get to wake up every morning, and instead of an empty space beside him, he’d see Cas – still asleep, probably, his face slack and peaceful, but he’d smile a little and hum in his throat when Dean reached over and put his hand to the side of Cas’ head, stroking his thumb back and forth just to feel the smoothness and warmth of Cas’ skin against his own –

Dean cleared his throat. He was getting ahead of himself.

The point was, Dean was ready to start a relationship with Cas.

Even just saying that to himself, inside his head, felt like a contained explosion, like the breaking of a dam that he’d been unconsciously maintaining for God knows how long. He was ready to start a relationship, with Cas. He wanted to be with Cas. He wanted to be with Cas,  _exclusively._ He wanted to have Cas around all the time. He wanted to be able to do dumb relationship things, things that he’d feel stupid asking for but which might just happen naturally with Cas, like holding hands and kissing on the cheek and cuddling for entire afternoons, just because their bodies felt better when they were pressed together. And of course,  _of course_ he wanted to press their bodies together in a different way, in a way that – if he was honest – he’d been trying to avoid thinking about for far too long, and failing, because nothing felt better than picturing Cas laid out next to him, or stretched beneath him, or poured on top of him, his hands holding him so strong, his eyes deep and wanting, pulling Dean in further and closer in every way imaginable –

OK, so Dean wasn’t just ready to start a relationship with Cas. Dean was freaking  _gasping_ for a relationship with Cas. Christ, he was almost embarrassing himself with how badly he wanted it. He was going to have to push this back, box it up, so that Cas wouldn’t get freaked out. Things had only just barely got started between them, after all. He’d play it cool, at least for a little while.

Yeah, ‘cause that always went super well in every romantic comedy ever, Dean thought to himself wryly. They try to play it off as nothing, but everyone can tell that they’re completely, one-hundred-percent in love –

Dean pressed his hands over his eyes.

“Shut up,” he said, and then left the bathroom.

**

When Dean emerged from the bathroom, Cas was standing in the bar looking slightly lost. Dean walked up to him, smiling, for once not hiding the expression with a tilt of his chin or by turning away. He’d never been entirely sure why he did that, anyway. He guessed it had something to do with the fact that if Cas had seen him smile like this, he’d know Dean well enough to understand the warmth and the… feelings… behind it.

Sure enough, Dean saw Cas’ eyes widen a little as he approached, and when he smiled back, it was with Dean’s absolute favourite one – starting with the eyes as always, and then his lips remembered to move and caught up slowly, until his whole face was lit up with it. It took all of Dean’s self-restraint not to pull him into a kiss right then and there, but he stopped himself. They had a job to do here, and besides, there would be plenty of time for that at the bar tonight. He hoped.

“Hey,” he said, and he could hear the difference in his own tone – softer, more intimate, as though they were already speaking across the gap between their pillows, rather than standing just a little closer than usual in a dingy little dive bar. He blushed, and cleared his throat. “So, anyway, uh… did you get anything at the Palm Bar?”

Cas shook his head.

“Nothing seems to stand out,” he said. “The bar is often very full, apparently, so it was too hard for the bartender to notice anything specific. She did mention that most of the people she remembered seeing had left with someone on the night that they disappeared.”

“Same for me,” said Dean with a frown. “But that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. I mean, it’s pretty normal to take someone home from a bar.”

Cas frowned a little and nodded. Dean scuffed his shoes on the floor, managing to step a little closer to Cas by doing so. It was ridiculous, but now that Dean had finally acknowledged his feelings for Cas, it was as though there was some kind of magnetic appeal, almost irresistible, between Cas’ body and his own. It felt frighteningly familiar, as though Dean had been working against its pull for years, straining his muscles so tight for so long that he forgot they weren’t made to be that way. And now they were loosening, and he was loosening, and it felt a little as though he were coming undone –

“Dean?” Cas’ voice brought Dean back to the present. He was going to have to stop thinking about things in front of people. Long silences with staring were traditionally Cas’ area, not his own.

If he was using the time when he was staring intensely at Cas in silence to think about how much he wanted to kiss Cas, did that mean that all those times when Cas was staring in silence at Dean, he was thinking about…?

“Dean, are you alright?”

Dean snapped back to reality.

“Yeah, yeah,” he said. “Come on, there’s a bar over the other side of town that I want to check out, and on the way we’ll see if we can get an EMF reading from any of the buildings on this street.”

They spent the rest of the afternoon fruitlessly searching the street for any signs at all of ghostly activity. The bar on the far side of town turned out to be a little more useful; the bartender remembered the victims, said that they’d come in for a quiet drink, met somebody, and left with them.

“It’s gotta be something to do with the fact that they’re hooking up,” Dean said, as they returned to their motel room in the evening. “It’s the only thing that they all have in common. Maybe some kind of rogue Cupid?”

Cas tilted his head.

“It’s possible,” he said.

Dean waved a hand carelessly.

“Well, we’ll go to the Old Town House tonight, see if we can find anything that looks a little odd. If not, we’ll make a new plan in the morning. Come on, let’s eat something before we go to the bar.”

An hour later, with a lukewarm night growing out the deep shadows under the buildings like dark bags under a tired man’s eyes, Dean and Cas stepped into the Old Town House. It was fairly full, but Dean found them a table easily enough, tucked into a corner. Cas sat down whilst Dean approached the bar to get their drinks. There was a soft, slow, definitely seductive kind of music playing; Dean could understand the place’s reputation as a prime hook-up spot.

The bartender looked surprised to see him, but smiled.

“What can I do for you, Officer?” he said. Dean smiled and shook his head.

“It’s just Dean when I’m off-duty,” he said. “I’d like a couple of beers, please. El Sol, if you’ve got it.”

“Sure have.” The bartender handed them over, Dean paid, and then he headed back towards Cas, who was looking a little lost, sitting at the table alone, staring around at the other people in the bar. All his cocksure attitude from earlier had gone – and Dean found that he didn’t mind at all. He understood Cas in this mood.

“One beer for the blue-eyed boy,” Dean said, putting it down on the table in front of Cas, who blinked and then smiled.

“Thank you, Dean,” he said, and Dean couldn’t help but watch Cas as he sat down next to him. Their proximity was a little startling, but it wasn’t uncomfortable; on the contrary, as they sat in comfortable silence for a few moments, sipping on their beers, they found themselves relaxing into each other’s space. Their hands were lying close together on the table, and Dean caught himself drawing imaginary lines between their fingers, calculating the distance between them.

“Dean?” said Cas.

“Yeah?” Dean said, looking at Cas, and suddenly finding himself smiling. Cas’ eyes were fixed on his, and even after just a few sips of beer he had a little pink spot on each cheek, and he looked freaking  _stunning._ Cas, catching his mood, smiled too – a little shyly, dipping his head in a gesture that Dean recognised, and realised ruefully that he had passed on. He wanted to reach out and tuck his fingers under Cas’ chin, lift his face up, tell him that he didn’t have to hide when he was happy.

“I – I forgot what I was going to say,” Cas confessed, looking back up at Dean with that smile still warm around his mouth. Dean wondered what it would feel like to kiss Cas’ lips whilst they were smiling like that.

“That’s OK,” he said, a little hoarsely. “We’ve got all night. Plenty of time for you to remember.”

There was a long pause, where Cas’ smile faded and was replaced by a different expression, more intense, more purposeful. Dean arched an eyebrow, and Cas opened his mouth.

“Dean, since we arrived this morning I – I’m sensing that something has changed,” he said. “I wanted to be sure that I’m not misreading any signals…”

“You’re not,” Dean said, the words almost tumbling out of his mouth. “You’re not, Cas. It’s OK. I mean, it’s OK with me if it’s OK with you?”

“It’s fine with me,” said Cas. “In fact, I’m relieved.”

“You are?” Dean said, grinning, a little light-headed with the fact that this was happening, they were  _talking_ about it, it was  _real_. He took a long pull on his beer.

“Yes, Dean. And a little nervous, too.”

Dean could help himself no longer; he reached out his hand for Cas’, threading their fingers together on top of the table.

“Me too,” he said simply, looking down at their joined hands. Cas’ skin felt warm and soft under his fingers. “It’s OK.”

They smiled at each other for a long moment, swaying a little closer, eyes becoming a little more intense and focused.

“Dean –” Cas said, and at that moment, Dean’s cell rang.

Dean hesitated for a moment, looking into Cas’ eyes, before cursing and taking it out of his pocket. He frowned at the screen for a moment.

“I don’t recognise the number,” he said. “I’d better take it, just in case. You OK here?”

“I’m fine,” said Cas. Dean squeezed his fingers before letting go and walking quickly outside, answering the call just as he left the noisy, slightly smoky bar and emerged into the cool, silent night.

“Hello?” he said, with a little more bite than usual. Whoever this was, it had better be good.

There was silence on the other end of the line.

“Hello, is anyone there? Can you hear me?” Dean was starting to shiver a little; the night wasn’t especially cold, but inside the bar it had been warm and the disparity was raising goosebumps on his exposed skin.

“Sam, if this is you, it’s not funny. At all.”

Nothing but static. Dean gave a little snort of disgust and hung up. He tucked the phone back into his pocket, taking a moment to breathe in a little of the night air and look up at the wide, cloudless sky.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Dean heard a familiar voice say. He turned around with a grin.

“I thought you were going to wait at the table,” he said.

“I’m done with waiting,” Cas said. His expression was different again, Dean thought, his stomach sinking slightly. Harder, almost – hungrier. He didn’t understand why this new side to Cas was emerging, but it made him feel wrong-footed, as though he’d found an extra stair on a familiar staircase.

“You are?” he said. Cas moved closer, his smile bright and confident, and Dean found himself melting a little beneath it.

“Yes,” Cas said, his voice low, his eyes smouldering. “Let’s go back to the motel, Dean.”

Dean swallowed, and then nodded his head, once.

They walked together in silence, not touching each other. There was something palpable in the air between them, but it wasn’t the relaxed, easy attraction of mere minutes before; it was something sharper, more dangerous. Dean didn’t understand. Perhaps when they got back to the motel, everything would be simpler. He could ask Cas about this new side to him. Once he understood it, he was sure that it would be less – unnerving.

The walk back only took a few minutes, since the motel was on the same road as the bar. Once they were back in their room, Dean caught Cas looking around it with a kind of fascinated expression on his face, his eyes taking in Dean’s abandoned piece of pie, his overnight bag, his rumpled bedsheets.

“Cas, buddy… everything OK?” he hazarded, feeling a little lost. Cas turned back to him, his expression hot and powerful.

“Everything is fine,” he said simply. Dean nodded and then moved past him, switching on the TV so that the sound of an old spaghetti western filled the room.

“It’s too quiet otherwise,” he said, flickering a smile. Cas smirked lazily back. The expression was so unlike anything that Dean had ever seen on his face that he almost took a step back.

“Have you enjoyed today, Dean?” Cas said, moving a little closer. Dean found his eyes flicking over to the door, over Cas’ shoulder. He’d have to push past Cas to get out. But why did he want to get out? Hadn’t he been thinking about this moment all day?

“Yeah,” he croaked. “Yeah, it’s been great.” There was the sounds of gunshots and yells from the TV.

“I’ve loved spending time with you,” Cas said. He was so close now. Dean was holding himself still with an effort. There was something about Cas’ face, being used as it was in a way that he didn’t understand, which made him want to cry. He could feel the tears building up behind his eyes, and swallowed frantically. He couldn’t  _cry_ the first time he was about to get together with Cas, that wasn’t sexy at all.

Cas wouldn’t mind, said a little voice in Dean’s head.

 _This_ Cas would, Dean answered himself, looking into Cas’ eyes and seeing that flatness, that confidence which had been there earlier – and whilst there was definitely a part of him that was responding to it, there was also a part of him that didn’t want anything to do with it at all.

But that was crazy. This was Cas. Cas was Cas, and Dean wanted to be with Cas. Anything else was sheer insanity.

Cas was incredibly close. Dean could see the little marks and whorls on his skin, the veins across the tops of his eyelids, the roughness of the stubble at the base of his chin. On the TV, there was the sound of footsteps, just discernible over the noise of the gunfire.

“I’m going to make you feel so good, Dean,” said Cas, and  _that_ was seriously hot, Dean couldn’t deny it – it would be fine, he was just nervous. The sound of footsteps was getting louder. Cas was leaning closer. Dean felt his eyes slide shut. If he couldn’t see Cas, then he could imagine that he was kissing the Cas from back at the bar, the one who did awkward silences and long, emotion-filled stares and rawness and depth and –

And on the TV, there was an incredibly loud  _bang,_ as though a door had been thrown violently open –

And Cas’ breath was ghosting across his lips, and it was cold, and Dean repressed a shudder –

And then there was a yell, and Dean opened his eyes to find Cas’ face oddly slack, and looking down, he saw the point of a silver blade sticking out of his chest.

For a second, he was too shocked to move, to speak, to breathe. Cas made a rasping, monstrous sound, and before Dean could react, he sank to the floor, his eyes glazed over. And as he fell, he revealed the person standing behind him, who was –

Cas.

Cas, looking a little dishevelled and completely  _furious._

“That moment is  _mine_ ,” he growled at the fallen monster, his top lip pulling back in a little snarl of anger. “ _Mine._ ”

“C-Cas…?” Dean said, and then felt his legs start to give way beneath him, so he stumbled to his right and sat down heavily at the foot of Cas’ bed. “Cas, what – what the hell –”

“It was a Siren, I think,” Cas said, staring down at the body on the floor, his expression a mixture of anger and distaste. “Attempting to prey on you by pretending to be me.”

“S-so you’re the real Cas?” Dean said, running his shaking hand through his hair. He couldn’t erase the image of Cas standing in front of him, a knife in his chest, his eyes unfocused as he fell. “You’re definitely the real…?”

Cas turned to him, his eyes afire.

“I am the real Cas,” he said.

“You’re –  _Christ_ , Cas, for a second there I really thought –”

“You really thought that I was dead,” Cas said, his tone colourless. Dean felt his lip tremble, felt the tears that had been threatening finally spill over. He heard Cas let out a little sigh, and move towards him across the room.

“Dean,” he said, and laid a careful, tender hand on Dean’s shoulder, his grip strengthening when Dean didn’t pull away. Dean swallowed furiously and tried to rein in his tears, feeling stupid and emotional and incongruous, with Cas standing beside him so icily unruffled.

“You could’ve been gone,” he said, trying to explain himself with a kind of desperation, so that Cas wouldn’t think too little of him. “I thought you were dead just then.”

“Because you really thought that was me,” Cas said blandly. Dean looked up at him, his eyes wide, forgetting his tears.

“Of course I thought it was you,” he said. “I thought it was you in some weird-ass, creepy mood that totally freaked me out, but I was gonna freaking  _deal_ with it because I thought it was you!”

Cas frowned.

“I shouldn’t be angry,” he said. “Sirens are very difficult to spot. It’s no wonder that you didn’t notice any difference.”

“Didn’t notice any – did you listen to what I just said?” Dean demanded. He could feel his tears drying on his cheeks. “I’ve seen it – I think – twice before, today. Once at the grocery store and once at the Old Town House. You must’ve still been at the Palm Bar. And it looked like you, and it said some of the things I wanted to hear, but it couldn’t – it was wrong, there were bits of you that it couldn’t get right, no matter how hard it tried. But I thought it was just ‘cause this… this is all a new thing for us, and you were just being a little different because of that.”

“What did it get wrong?” Cas asked, his tone a little gentler. His hand was slowly moving up Dean’s shoulder; Dean resisted the urge to turn and kiss it.

“It looked like you,” Dean said. “But it didn’t act enough like you. It was – it felt like –” he swallowed. “There’s this thing that I feel when we look at each other,” he said wretchedly. “This way that you have of reacting to the face I’m making. And it couldn’t do it right. And the eyes, they were – they were wrong, they were flat, whereas yours go back for miles…” Dean trailed off. “Why did it even try to pretend to be you?” he burst out. “It must have known that I’d – or that you’d – that we’d figure it out!”

 _We nearly didn’t,_ Dean could see Cas thinking, but he didn’t say that. Instead, he thought for a moment, and then replied,

“Sirens want to be loved, more than anything. They’re attracted to those who give love most bountifully, most beautifully. I imagine the Siren found you almost irresistible.”

“But – but it could have used another face,” Dean said. “Like the Siren I met before, it pretended to be someone I’d never met.”

“Would that have worked?” Cas asked, looking down at Dean. “Would you have shown it love?”

Dean tried to imagine flirting or getting close to someone else whilst Cas was there next to him. The idea was almost laughable.

“No,” he said quietly. “It wouldn’t have worked.”

For a moment they sat quietly. Cas’ hand was at the back of Dean’s neck, his thumb rubbing a small, soothing circle there.

“Let’s go home,” Dean said. “I don’t want to stay in this room.”

Cas nodded, and they began to silently gather up their things. Dean did his best not to look down at the dead Siren, which was still wearing Cas’ face; even though Cas was very much alive only a few feet away, just looking at it was enough to make him shaky. He thrust the box of his uneaten pie roughly into his bag, and then threw open the door.

“Do we need to burn the body?” Cas asked, looking back. Dean shook his head.

“I can’t face it,” he said, a little bleakly. “There’s no CCTV ‘round here, so they won’t have us on video. We won’t be able to come back to this part of town for a while, but I wasn’t really planning on doing that anyway.”

They made their way out past the unmanned reception desk of the motel, walking together across the parking lot to the Impala. Once Dean had thrown his bag into the trunk beside Cas’, he wandered around to the front of the car, and perched lightly on the hood. Cas followed him, standing in front of him, his body angled so that they were almost facing each other. Dean looked up at the sky, tracing the network of stars with his eyes.

“’m sorry,” he said, after several moments of silence. “I should’ve known.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Dean saw Cas’ shoulders relax.

“No, Dean,” Cas said firmly. “I’m sorry for making you feel bad about it. You did very well to resist the temptation of the creature at all.”

“Mmm. To be honest, it wasn’t all that tempting,” Dean said.

“No?”

“No,” said Dean, tearing his eyes away from the stars in the sky, and looking instead at the ones caught in Cas’ eyes. “It wasn’t you.”

They stared at each other for a long moment, and Dean felt the wave of potential that had been rolling in so strongly at the bar resurface, and redouble; something clicked, and they were back.

Dean cleared his throat.

“What did you mean, when you stabbed the – the thing, you said, ‘that moment is mine’?”

Cas flushed a little, beautifully, Dean thought.

“Our first kiss was going to be with you and it, not you and me,” he said. “But that moment is mine. When it happens, it’s mine.”

Dean smiled, and he didn’t tilt his face away; he let his happiness shine out over Cas like a sun, and watched him uncurl and bask a little in the heat of it.

“ _When_ it happens,” he said. “Do you have any preferences about when that might be?”

“Soon,” said Cas, seriously.

“Hmm. Within the next week?”

“Sooner,” Cas replied.

“Within the next day?”

“Sooner,” Cas said, his eyes absolutely solemn.

“Within the next minute?”

“Sooner.”

“Within the next second?”

Cas leaned down, and kissed Dean on the lips. It was a little messy at first, their lips not quite in the right place, but then Dean tilted his head and slipped his hand up to cup Cas’ cheek and suddenly it was  _perfect_ , their slightly-parted lips pressed together, Dean flicking out his tongue to lick Cas’ lower lip and eliciting a little gasp – and then Cas was pressing closer, his lips still relaxed and soft but pushing harder, and when Dean breathed in through his nose all he could smell was Cas, Cas, Cas, he wanted nothing but that one smell, this one taste, the texture of Cas’ lips and the softness of his tongue…

They broke away, Cas gasping a little, staying close. Dean’s hand was a little shaky against Cas’ cheek.

“You’ve gotta breathe through your nose,” Dean said, as Cas got his breath back. Cas nodded wordlessly, and Dean could feel his lips against his own cheek, smiling softly. Gently, slowly, he pressed a kiss to Cas’ smile.

It felt wonderful.


End file.
